


The moon is disappearing (and so will you)

by Claus_Lucas



Category: Mother 3
Genre: Childhood, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Sibling Rivalry, Trauma, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 13:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7978375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claus_Lucas/pseuds/Claus_Lucas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucas just can't bring himself to blame a kid: Claus didn't know what cruelty was. Even if Claus pretended he didn't know who Lucas was sometimes; even if he pretended they weren't brothers.</p><p>Well, maybe for a bit. But it passed. The dead are always forgiven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The moon is disappearing (and so will you)

**Author's Note:**

> [forgive the kids, for they don't know how to live, run the alleys casually cruel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itt0rALeHE8)

Claus used to play tricks on Lucas that weren’t nice. Not nice at all. But cruelty is in the eyes of the beholder, and you can’t judge a child by the evil they haven’t yet learned.

Lucas did not perceive his brother’s taunts as malicious, either. He felt them as if they were the surface of a seashell, his fingers mapping the texture: mostly smooth with the occasional bump. It filled him with a particular kind of melancholy that was exclusive to that experience. A sadness he associated only with his sibling. As if he had held the tender, thin shell too tight, and it had snapped, transformed into a series of jagged puzzle pieces. When Claus apologized afterwards, or Lucas apologized for him, the bits were glued back together, but the texture was never like before: it was riddled with cracks and sharp niches. One way or another, Lucas always felt partly to blame for spoiling such a lovely artifact.

“The moon, Lucas,” Claus said, not once but several times, up until the point when the joke was no longer effective because Lucas knew better than to believe it. “The moon, you see it in the sky? What does it look like to you?”

Upon his brother’s prompting, Lucas would crane his neck towards the heavens and set his gaze upon that enigmatic figure. Still at the age where the light of stars were friendly spirits and comets promised the fulfilling of wishes, Lucas was curious about the moon the way he was curious about the passing of seasons, the freezing of rivers, the death of flowers. He felt the presence of the moon daylong, and sometimes even caught glimpses of its silhouette like a faint silver disc shrouded by the sun’s brighter glow, but it was at night when the moon went uncensored, radiant in such an unapologetic manner, Lucas couldn’t help marveling slightly each time he was made aware of it. The question, however, remained: where did the moon’s luster go during the day? Did it hide behind a blue window, drape itself in cloth so it could rest for a little while? And there was also the matter of its shape, such a peculiar and surprising palette –huge and round one night, barely a sliver the next, the perfect half of a sphere in between.

So when Claus gestured at the moon, his hand raised to the darkened sky, Lucas pondered for a moment, then offered his sincerest opinion.

“The moon is not at its strongest tonight. It’s hardly visible at all. It must be tired after all the light it’s leant us this week.”

Claus was a skilled actor, a natural born talent that he honed with the passing years quite unconsciously. He was often unaware of the extent to which his clever tricks could affect those he played them on.

“You’re saying you can’t see all of it?” He asked. The hint of distress in his tone was minuscular, but Lucas could already see in his frown and how his eyebrows furrowed that his answer was somehow mistaken.

And because Lucas was the one to elicit it, he felt wholeheartedly to blame for it.

Lucas nodded in response. Claus cupped the side of his face with one hand and rested his elbow on the other.

“That’s not good, Lucas,” he said. “The moon is shining at its fullest every night. It’s always big and round. If you can’t see it, then…”

A well timed instant of suspense goes a long way –that’s all it takes for someone to hold their breath and forget to breathe calmly for days.

“Then what?” Lucas asked, sounding anxious and agitated. Claus could tell from his body language that he’d been swallowed up completely by the set up.

Claus turned to stare at the sky while he spoke.

“If you can’t see the entire moon, then it means something is wrong with you. The moon is a symbol of who we are, like a reflection. Have you seen the moon reflected on the surface of the ocean? Well, that’s how it is for us. We are the ocean. If the ocean is too dark, or too shallow, you can’t really see the moon reflected. But if it’s light and deep, you can see a full moon. If you can’t see part of the moon, Lucas, then it means soon you will start to disappear, too.”

Claus had planned each word beforehand, he had written and rewritten them and then rehearsed them when he was alone and no one could discover what he was up to. He anticipated Lucas’s possible reactions, one of which was close enough to how it unfolded for him to know exactly how to perform. Claus was a cunning eight year old, someone that could easily dedicate himself to study and immerse himself in the composing and solving of puzzles. But while he remained at a fickle and inexperienced age, his talents were occasionally employed in less than beneficial actions. Of course, he never realized how much he hurt Lucas with such pranks, and that was partly because Lucas rarely disclosed it; and when he did break down or scream at Claus the apology was never enough to heal the damage, because neither of them understood what needed to be demanded and what needed to be given.

Lucas was paralyzed with fear. He could not look away from Claus, who finally met his gaze, and it was brimming with pity.

He took a step forward, touched Lucas’s left shoulder, and spoke.

“I’ve heard of this happening, and that’s why I’m warning you. You see the moon’s shape cycle, don’t you? A thin line, a quarter full, almost but not quite a sphere –they’re all signs. Signs of how you’ll disappear, too.”

As Claus continued his speech, he moved his hand onto Lucas’s chest, lingered for a bit before brushing his right arm, and then finally lifted it again to touch his face.

“At first we won’t be able to see a little bit of you. Then, as time passes, we won’t see half of you. Eventually not even that will be left, and all but your face will be covered in darkness. Ultimately, your face will also disappear.”

Lucas lowered his chin. He stared at the ground surrounding Claus’s feet. Tears were welling behind his eyes but they would not pour out. He felt so fragile and weak that even tiny drops of water could shatter him into pieces. And then not even glue would be able to put him together –he would be gone, just like Claus said.

At this point Claus smiled, transforming his face with an optimistic glee that bled into his voice as he uttered the following:

“But don’t worry! I’m sure it’s just this once that you’re seeing the darkness of the moon. Tomorrow you’ll see it big and round and full of light and know you’re not really disappearing!”

He sounded so cheerful. Lucas couldn’t digest it. He processed Claus’s complete change of atmosphere as if it were the surface of something, the underside invisible.

“If it happens again, though, tell me, okay? Just in case. We have to be careful.”

With those words he parted, his role concluded, his plan a success. He patted Lucas on the shoulder, then turned around to walk back into their house. Lucas stood outside alone, still very much upset.

Claus did not specify what it meant if Lucas continued to see the moon in fragments, but the absence of an elaboration only served to further the terror in his head. He would not, he decided, tell Claus if he saw the moon as anything but big and round and full of light. He would keep it to himself.

If he started to disappear, then Claus and everyone else would know, but Lucas dreaded more being told what horrible thing he’d done to deserve turning into darkness.

* * *

It’s summer and the ocean is spelling his name in the banter of waves –approaching, retreating; rising, crashing upon each other– and the skeletons of shells pilling up across the beach –echoes caught within their walls, soliloquys of more lively times. Lucas has both of his feet planted in the wet, mushy sand and steps back each time the current swells to try to touch him. He can hear the ocean calling, feel its buoyancy trying to claim anything he’ll offer, so it can float forever upon its surface like driftwood from a shipwreck.

And Lucas doesn’t want to be caught. He contemplates but does not plunge. He listens but won’t answer.

The ocean is swift tonight, and larger than usual. It’s a full moon. The magnetic attraction, at its peak, draws the waters to rise. Hence they are closer. Hence they are louder, moaning and splashing against the shore in such a penetrating manner that Lucas simply can’t ignore it.

He is here to see what he can find, though he expects nothing from the ocean but an urge for self-destruction, and he is past the point where he can afford to commit pity suicide.

Not that he’s ever seriously considered it. Or considered it without the restrictions of fear and uncertainty and a sense of duty towards whatever is left of this earth that’ll still build a hole where he can hide.

Lucas crushes a seashell in his hand. Dusk makes it hard to see clearly, but it appears to be chocolate brown. A thought crosses his mind: the surface that the ocean has polished for decades is rendered to dust in a second.

His gaze fixes on the moon reflected on the ocean. It’s such a beautiful sight amidst that murky blanket. A smile grazes Lucas’s lips, though it is not without its fair share of bitterness.

“We all live beneath the same moon,” his mother once said, and it was one of those moments that, for whatever reason, Lucas recalled, in vivid detail, years later.

“No matter where you find yourself, you can always count on the comfort that there are others, closer to you than you can imagine.

“Just take a look at the moon: everyone in the world sees the same one.”

She could’ve said that about the sun, or the sky, or the stars, or countless other things. But she chose the moon. Randomly, most likely. She did not go through every possibility in her mind and then select the moon, as if it were special.

And yet the moon it was.

“We all live beneath the same moon,” Lucas say to himself, a murmur.

He tires of standing and sits down, far enough for even the full moon ocean to be incapable of reaching him. He pulls out a long, tangled string from his pocket and begins straightening it out.

Since he obviously won’t be sleeping tonight, how about a game of cat’s cradle?

* * *

There were other ways Claus picked on Lucas. Like all children, he did eventually develop a sense of right and wrong, kindness and meanness. Some of his ploys became more elaborate after this point, while others, reflected upon with this new understanding, vanished from their dynamics completely. Overall, the twins would agree that it was an improvement. Lucas’s ability to express his feelings also improved, leading to a long and complex history of compromises and accommodations, forgiveness and grudges.

Focusing on before they underwent this breakthrough, however, here is another example of Claus’s antagonistic games:

Claus was a proud player of cat’s cradle, and with good reason, too: he was not only a master of various techniques, but also capable of learning new patterns with awe-inspiring speed and ease. Claus could watch someone make a knot he was unfamiliar with once, twice, three times, and then, after attempting to mirror it a couple of times himself, succeed. He was sure to show it off to everyone he could, too –the entire process, from the untangled string to the finished product.

What Claus was not skilled at was teaching. Often dismissive of instructions himself, he wasn’t good at giving them to others. He learned by doing and didn’t have the patience to guide in any other manner. And he worked fast, so there wasn’t enough time to understand the movements he made, analyze the series of twists and folds and ties.

Both twins learned the basics of cat’s cradle from their mother, and Claus quickly took off, memorizing patterns she had only shown them as examples and inquiring with others for more elaborate ones. He even invented a few himself. Lucas, on the other hand, was slow, at least slower than his brother, and struggled behind him until Hinawa decided that she’d teach them separately. These weren’t routinely classes, more like the occasional introduction to a new pattern, and while Lucas left it at that Claus demanded more extensive sessions. Hinawa found his passion charming and considered it something to endorse. Lucas marveled, reluctant to showcase his own, lacking knowledge in the presence of it.

Of course Claus reminded Lucas of his talent constantly. Of course Claus got involved every time Lucas tried to play. Of course Claus made sure Lucas forgot completely about cat’s cradle being fun and instead started associating it with negative emotions.

This conceived another unique brand of sorrow that Claus felt exclusively in relation with his brother –the sadness of not belonging, of being unworthy of something.

Claus continued playing cat’s cradle while Lucas stopped. And when Claus finally grew tired of it, Lucas asked why, and the explanation somehow crushed him, filling him with a profound sense of disappointment, which he couldn’t bring himself to blame on Claus so he swallowed it and began hating himself in little ways.

There were lots of little ways that Claus made Lucas hate himself.

Lucas looked up to Claus and that, when outside of Claus’s perspective, was his deadliest weapon. When Claus knew, he swung it around like a trophy, but when he didn’t, he discarded it, and Lucas found himself feeling as if he were all the worse for caring so deeply about something that no longer entered Claus’s concern.

In retrospect, Lucas could not blame Claus. Then again, he really could, since nothing, not even the understanding of childish cruelty, can heal the trauma it creates.

And yet Lucas did not. Blame Claus. Maybe briefly, but it passed.

Lucas played a game of cat’s cradle in the dark. He’d actually gotten a lot better since he started playing again. Typical of him, being a later bloomer.

* * *

He is like the dark side of the moon: you know he exists, but can never see him.

All of the Masked Man’s features are diluted by the darkness, the shadows cast across them. There’s no doubt that his body is there but the details are anyone’s guess. Because there is a place where his face exists, a place where his legs exist, a place where his chest exists –this is known empirically. But what makes him unique? Only his attitude.

He is the side that is always turned away. He does not glimmer on the ocean’s surface. He does not appear as a sliver, or half a circle, or full and round.

He has completed his disappearing act.

Lucas opens his mouth to speak.

“Hey, who are you?”

* * *

 Sometimes, when Claus found himself dissatisfied with Lucas’s behavior and could not persuade him to change it, he would play an especially ill-spirited game.

It consisted in pretending he did not know who Lucas was.

“Hey, who are you?” Claus would ask, without warning, right in the middle of their conversation. “I don’t know you.”

The first time he did it, Lucas was terrified. He could either believe that his brother was serious and had truly forgotten him –which he refused– or that Claus would dislike him enough to want to forget him –which he also refused. Thus he was without an explanation for this behavior, desperately begging Claus to remember him.

If Lucas tried answering his question, Claus would say: “Lucas? I don’t know a Lucas. Who’s Lucas?”

The moment Lucas identified the game, he stumbled into a fit of panicked crying, not the quiet, reserved kind but loud blubbering with the occasional dejected moan. His face would swell with perspiration, snot, and tears. His skin burned bright red. His heart felt like it was pulsating behind his eyes, conjuring a headache. And his words slurred, tough they continued to grow more distressed.

It would always take a while for Claus to stop. He was always hoping Lucas would agree to change his mind on whatever had prompted him, but Lucas never realized that. All Lucas would relate regarded how well he knew Claus. “I know you, Claus, you’re great at cat’s cradle,” for example. “And I’m not so good, so I really admire what you can do.” Always trying to establish evidence of an existing link between them.

When Claus gave up, he would say, “Okay, okay. You’re Lucas. I know who you are. But you have to stop crying now, okay?”

Lucas could not actually stop on demand, but he made a distinct effort, thoroughly convinced that Claus might revoke this truce if he failed to fulfill those terms.

Once, just once, when he was especially furious, Claus shouted, “You’re not my brother! I don’t have a brother!”

Claus did not sooth Lucas with words that time. Lucas did not even insist he was wrong.

Neither of them spoke any further. Lucas stood, visibly trembling, while his eyes, wide and aghast, stared at the floor while really staring off into something nonexistent.

Lucas finally relaxed when Claus embraced him, after which he simply left. Claus never apologized.

* * *

“Hey, who are you?” Lucas asks.

He’s addressing the darkness, complex and vicious but entirely still. He’s not entirely convinced there’s someone else with him. But then there’s a ripple, like skipping over the surface of water.

The Masked Man slams into Lucas’s body, knocking the air and the words he was planning to say out of his chest. The Masked Man’s arms lock around Lucas’s torso. Then, with the strength of a planet supporting a moon, he lifts Lucas off the ground and throws him forward.

Lucas hits the ground. Pain pierces his spine like a nail and every movement henceforth forces it in deeper. The taste of blood is in his mouth. His ears might be ringing, or the Masked Man might be close enough for him to hear the mechanical tinkering that emits from his body. It’s a sign he should heed either way.

Only the psychic energy that forms a barrier around Lucas saves him from being murdered. The Masked Man’s sword does not penetrate the shield, but it leaves a nasty scar across it.

The Masked Man lifts his arm into the air and from a clear sky emerge clouds, thick, heavy, bruise gray clouds. Lucas looks in the direction that his hand is pointing but the moon’s light is quickly blotted out by the storm.

Lucas’s shield won’t protect him from a surge of lightning, not in its present strength. He stands, first on his knees, then teetering on his feet. The pain is a searing presence.

His fingers touch his forehead. The mosaic of cyan light expands. It’s an amalgamate of diamonds and butterflies.

The Masked Man’s sword is radiant with electricity circulating throughout it. Sparks emanate from his fingertips, and, on the opposite side, his canon prosthetic glows with several shades of red and blue.

The sky is charging.

There’s no such thing as the moon disappearing –it has a dark side, but you can see it from the right angle

* * *

Lucas had a clear view of the moon. He’d finally figured out that what Claus said about it was a lie but the moon was actually always full and round. What happens is that it can’t all be seen from the ground, and it goes through cycles, so sometimes we see more while other times less. Everyone sees it the same, and no one disappears because the moon does.

Lucas felt a little bit like he was disappearing, though.

Not because of the moon, but the moon reminded him.

The moon reflected on the surface of the ocean.

And cat’s cradle, a game so beautiful and elaborate and alone. Every game of cat’s cradle is played alone.

He stared at the arrangement of intertwined string in his hands.

After all these years, this is the only pattern Lucas could invent.

And it’s still sort of stolen from Claus, at least the beginning.

* * *

“Are you Claus?” Lucas asks.

The Masked Man has lifted him by his collar. His feet aren’t touching the ground. The Masked Man is remarkably strong for a boy his size.

It’s obvious how much Lucas has grown from just looking at them.

“Hey, will you stop pretending?”

There are tears behind Lucas’s eyes but they aren’t coming out because he is terrified of even breathing. He can only speak in rushed murmurs.

What he’s afraid of breaking isn’t himself, though.

“I know the truth about the moon. I know it doesn’t disappear, but from down here it seems like it does. I’m good but not as good as you at playing cat’s cradle. I know your magic tricks aren’t really magic –I know the tricks.”

Lucas can see the signs. Geometrical figures of pink and blue energy are clustering around the Masked Man. They appear complex, like labyrinths, but underneath they are all the same thing: one big thread spun in different directions.

Cat’s cradle.

“Isn’t that proof enough that I know who you are?”

A low rumble is the only response Lucas receives. The Masked Man is growling and its body is humming, which blends together to form the auditory equivalent of the uncanny valley effect. Lucas can see part of his face but not all of it.

“You’re Claus, aren’t you?”

The Masked Man drops him. There’s no time to defend, and what would Lucas do if there was? Shield himself again? Sneak a counter in to deflect the attack? The Masked Man is stronger. His psychic energy is more advanced.

Lucas blacks out the moment the Masked Man’s hand touches his face.

It feels like being struck by lightning, but with something else added.

Unlike Lucas’s PK Love, which is a physical manifestation of the emotional strength love supplies him, the Masked Man’s technique depends on his ignorance of it, the misunderstanding groomed from that, and his ultimate rejection of its associated characteristics.

Basically, he was taught by the people that built him that love is everything you have to do to eliminate that which frightens you.

Like a little kid hitting his brother because he refuses to feel bad alone. Because dragging someone else down with you is the only real comfort most children know. And it’s not cruelty in the eyes of a child.

That’s what the Masked Man’s PK Love feels like.


End file.
